TV Samaritans
Sir: As the former director of the Albany Trust responsible for the decision to refer Albany Trust casework to the Samaritans (only about 60 per cent of it, incidentally, related to "troubled homosexuals "), may I explain that this decision did not involve the Samaritans at a national or a voluntary level. The work was, and I believe still is„ only referred to the London headquarters, and a trained, full-time member of the staff.
Having said that, I should jolly well hope that local voluntary Samaritans would not, as you imply, be in some way shocked at the prospect of counselling or befriending troubled homosexuals, whose socio-sexual difficulties are as likely to draw them to the Samaritans as are the socio-sexual difficulties of transvestites, transexuals, sado-masochists or just "straight-forward" lonely and dispirited heterosexuals.
Michael De-la-Noy 29 Osborne Villas, Hove, Sussex